


California dreamin'

by Misari



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game), Life Is Strange 2 (Video Game)
Genre: All Life is Strange Games, Blink and you miss Max/Nathan, Character Study, Daniel is a bit melancholic, Dreams and Nightmares, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Post-Save Arcadia Bay Ending, Rachel and Chloe's tragedy, Remembrance, Sean and Finn in their beach house, Sorry Not Sorry, These kids need love, Victoria being the best BFF, Vignette, bittersweet endings, kind of, life is weird, post parting ways ending, they are like super long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22689427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misari/pseuds/Misari
Summary: -the year of magical thinking-**(As the corners of the world are our mere prologue be aware of this: when a door closes, a window opens… Or something like that. So I say to you: to the end and shit, man. We make our own rules. I love you, no matter what happens, your hear me?).***Nine years is all that separates them: their stories, their lives.Hear them out.
Relationships: Daniel Diaz & Sean Diaz, Maxine "Max" Caulfiel & Victoria Chase & Nathan Prescott, Maxine "Max" Caulfield & Victoria Chase, Rachel Amber/Chloe Price, Sean Diaz/Finn, Sean Diaz/Finn McNamara
Kudos: 11





	California dreamin'

> _I stopped into a church_
> 
> _I passed along the way_ _  
> _
> 
> _Well I got down on my knees_
> 
> _and I pretended to pray_
> 
> The Mamas and the Papas – California Dreamin’

**[Rachel &Chloe]**

**-2012-**

(They are two kids walking hand-in-hand at the edge of the dream).

The song starts suddenly.

They are smoking pot on the roof of the boat watching their lives passing by. California feels old, remote. Faraway in another life: the blazing sun on their skins, the ancient gentle ocean and its hypnotic waves, the breeze on the palm-trees and their faces, the sand liquid gold beneath their feet, the insipid taste of the coconuts, all in the center of their hands, all being nothing but dust when their fingers close into a fist.

The sky is blueish, turning pink, orange, red, as if someone used a knife in the middle of the horizon and cutted it off. It’s awful. It’s magnificent. It fucking bleeds all over the place. The song stars and they look at each other, high and stupid, a signal so old it’s like they can read the other’s mind. Rachel lip-syncs. Chloe follows her. At first it’s voiceless, the solemn pray on sacred ground. Then they whisper. It’s a painful, slow transition (like their lives): first, there was silence; in the end there is a tortured screech. Rachel taps with her hands a constant rhythm and Chloe looks at her like a moth into flame, ready to meet its destiny: death. It's the beating of a heart (the beating of a love). Then they murmur. A sweet, honeyed humming. Their voices raise, raise, raise up to the vermilion sky with longing. _I wish to… go somewhere else._ They take off (themselves, their voices, their dreams, their nightmares). In the middle of the melody they sing _My Number*_ at the top of their lungs on the top of a lost mountain, so far away from California’s ocean.

The tiny yellow radio blast the song and Rachel screams _turn the volume up sista!_ They want to expulse the oasis, the fiction, the fantasy, _go fuck yourself destroyer of lives,_ so Chloe does, she obeys. She stops her spinning world to give it to Rachel; here, take my heart too. Because everything Rachel wants, Rachel gets; even more if she ask Chloe to get it for her. Chloe would bring her the fucking moon. Hella, she could bring her the entire universe and she only needs to ask. (She should get fucking California. If only). American Rust and the filth of an ass-boring-town is all they have, all their domains; welcome to Arcadia Bay, bitches, the city where everyone lies to you. Two years ago everything was on fire. Two years ago… and nothing has really changed. 2012 and the alleged end of the world. It still is, everything is still on fire. Specially their lives, specially their souls. So they sing, murdering the song, so they dance, taking each other hands and whirling, twirling, swaying in the small place, balancing without a care in the planet earth if they fall to the ground (if they fall. Period).

So they howl and jump and laugh and break the limits of reality.

Freedom.

(A beach in California).

“To the song!” Rachel says, making an imaginary toast.

“To hell with the song, Rachel” Chloe squeezes her hand. She brings her close, so close the space between their realities is almost non-existed “If we’re going to toast, let’s do it for us, don't you think?”.

Rachel fixes her gaze on her. The song ends —like everything good, like everything in this motherfucking life— transitions into another one. Something stupid, something _romantic_. Chloe doesn't care which one: if she can't have the palms, the coconuts, the fancy beaches, if she can't have fucking California at least she wants the other part of the dream, the other part of the fantasy, the part that is most an accomplished plan than a check-list on a worn out paper. Rachel. She wants Rachel. (Because Rachel _is_ California, at least for Chloe). She begs for her, reaching into the unknown. _Please, please I wish to go somewhere else… with you_. Rachel is scrutinizing her. She is looking for the cracks, the wounds, the microscopic places where the light enters before it’s consumed by the dark. As always she takes her time. She eats it with pleasure. (She devours Chloe). And finally she founds them, she founds the cracks, the wounds, the blank spaces, the mascaraed places, she _founds Chloe._

Rachel moves. Closes the distance.

(California is only a breath away. Almost there). 

“Oh Chloe” her smile is radiant, her hands on her face are warm. “I do. Always, always to us”. Her eyes are tempestuous and her mouth moves on hers. She is fervid and Chloe is on fire, her bones melting inside her body.

“It's all we have. Each other”. Chloe confess, a little bit desperate, a little bit scared.

“Yes”. Rachel says, and then murmurs against the corner of her cheek, before kissing her again: “Always”.

(They are two kids walking hand-in-hand on the corner of the world—

they could fall).

**[Max]**

**-2015-**

“Watch it for the sunburns, young lady!” the old woman says to her.

Max is a bridge. The one who bounds the past with the present; not the future. (Such thing doesn't exist. All we have is the present, the place where our lungs breathe and our eyes see and our ears hear and our bodies feel. The place where everything happens and there is no coming back. She’d learnt that the hard way).

“I will! Thanks!” she responds, forming a smile and walking away.

The _tling_ of the drugstore’s door echoes. AUNTY BETSY’S CORNER says the billboard in red, white and blue letters. It's a nice, antique, kind of retro-vibe wood billboard; maybe it was made in the 50s or even the 60s. Max thinks, looking at the profound and contrasting shadows the sun creates on AUNTY BETSY’S CORNER and decides to take a photo. She grabs William’s camera ( _her_ camera for god’s sake) and aims. Another for the _Florida_ portfolio. Maybe she can send this one to Warren, or Kate, or even... Nathan. Victoria is going to be so thrill about it, _really Max? Another fucking billboard photo? You are losing your touch, you know._ She takes the photo anyway. The billboard is cool.

She shoots. A click, a flash, a zzzzzzz and the photo is in her hands. A pretty good shot she may add. If you took a quick look at the photo without knowing it was taken in 2015 you can easily imagine it could have been taken in the 50s. Don’t miss the chance: a trip to the past with Max Caulfield everybody. Well, yes, she supposes she is kind of a bridge. _You capture the world as you see it. That’s fucking amazing, Max!_

She smiles to the photo with clouded warm. It feels hot on her hands. For one moment, for one perpetual moment, suspended in eternity she only stares at it, this... this tiny piece of time. The colors, the shadows, the flashes of light, the textures, the painted letters, the story it’s telling, every detail is engraved not only in her mind now, but on paper. Everyone can take a quick peak of it. Everyone. How amazing is that? A piece of reality! How wonderful? The world in your hands! How fucking impossible? It is not, nonetheless. It is possible (everything is possible, including every dream). Here it is in the palm of her hand, believe it or not, hot turning cold, moving world running into a halt, the present merging into the past. A bridge between what it is and what it was.

“E-excuse me, are you okay?” someone asks her.

“What?” she says, startled.

Her cheeks are warm, wet, sticky. _She is crying._

“O-oh, yes, yes!” she cleans her cheeks, laugher intertwined with nervousness. “Yes I’m fine. Sorry”.

“Are you sure?”.

Max thinks it over. It’s hard knowing when you are okay and when you are not. But she tries anyway because she owes it to Chloe, to the promise, to the blue butterfly. To the people she loves —the ones she gave a chance, the ones she gave a second chance, the ones who gave _her_ a chance. She owes it to herself. (She promised to be a bridge, not a lighthouse. When there is light, there is also shadows. Bridges unify both). It’s been two years since Arcadia Bay, since she finished the school-year and said _goodbye for now_ to everybody and started traveling the country, meeting horrible and amazing people in equal parts, taking photos of places, of people, of the ruined dreams abandoned on the side of the road, of the dreams that became true, of the mountains and rivers and deserts and beaches, living her life and showing it to the world.

_This is me. Take it or leave it. But here I am._

She is on the other side of the ocean, far away from California.

“Yes, I’m okay” she finally answers. 

The person looks at her and after a brief surveying of her they nod, leaving her be, marching in the opposite direction, to the city. Max is going to the beach. She waves a silent goodbye to their back —a silent thanks too on her lips— and takes a minute, sitting in a nearby bench to put aside the photograph, safe and sound in her Florida portfolio. She doesn’t look at it, not yet, even if she is dying for it. Victoria’s rules.

Speaking of the devil, her phone is ringing; it’s Victoria.

“Hi Vic” she says trying not to sound as old as she feels right now. She is only twenty, for crying out loud.

“Hello to my favorite girlfriend!” Victoria’s sing-song voice is welcoming. Like coming home after a long, long trip. “How is Florida?”.

“Hella hot”.

“Jesus Caulfield! Of course is hot!” her indignation is palpable and funny. Max tries not to laugh. She feels lighter, relaxing into the hard grey plastic of the bench. “It’s fucking Florida, it is _supposed_ to be hot. I’d have been really worried if you told me is cold or, I don’t know, snowing”. 

“I know, I know, calm down” Victoria snorts on the other side of the phone. Max relaxes further in. She wishes Victoria was with her, enjoying Florida and not dying of college-related-stress in New York. “So, what's up? Problems with Stalinski’s class again?”.

“Ha ha, very funny”. This time Max laughs. She knows how much Victoria hates that guy’s guts. The hours she spends on the phone with her complaining about him are so many and hilarious. But to be fair to her, the guy is an imbecile. He is a misogynistic prick. “Have you finished?”.

Max nods before she remembers Victoria is not there with her. “Yes, sorry”.

“Good, because…” Victoria pauses for a long time. Max feels all the relaxing energy bleeding from her body, drop by drop. Is she going to die? She is suddenly tense and growing more tense as the seconds pass without any sound, without any signal of life. She looks at the sky, light-blue, bright, no clouds. Incredible beautiful. Only the sun, only the light to bring the shadows, only the gorgeousness to bring the ugliness. She whispers a very low, very timid _Victoria?_ and knows, before anything else, before Victoria answers, before she discovers the palm-tree forming a shadow behind her, that she is going to be a bridge soon. Again. Any moment now.

Victoria speaks, her voice trembling. “It’s about Nathan. He… needs me. You. He needs us”.

Max inhales. A bridge.

“Okay”.

But no, she is not only a bridge. She is _the_ bridge.

**[Finn &Sean]**

**-2018-**

It is fireworks. Doesn’t matter how many years passes, it’s actually fireworks, kissing Finn, _not like_ fireworks. The powder exploding inside his mouth. The fire spreading on his tongue. The colors green and yellow and red and the fucking rainbow behind his eyelids, all tasting sweet and spicy and salty. He could live here, in this moment, between Finn’s legs for all eternity —be it one million years or just one second—, just like this.

A crocked dream come true.

“Y're _good_ at this, sweetie”. Finn says, nuzzling his cheek with devotion.

“I know, _I know_ , man”. Sean smirks. He _feels_ good.

“Asshole” Finn pushes him, playfully, and the two of them end almost full body on the cold sand, off the warm orange blanket.

“But you love me”.

Sean expects a reply, the banter, the mischievous come and go, the funny ping-pong of words, but Finn stays deadly quiet, just looking at him. He can’t endure those blue-almost-silver eyes of his for much longer, not now, not like that, so he stands up and walks away. And walks. He puts his hands on his pockets; Dad's lighter is right there, Puerto Lobos’s coat of arms, cold to the touch, warm to the soul. He walks. And walks to the shore. The sand is wet and rubbery. The water licks his feet like a starved man from time to time. It's fucking freezing. A full shiver wraps his body like the orange blanket. Everything is silent, eerie, —maybe dead, maybe everyone is suddenly dead— the air feeling oppressive on his lungs, on his throat. He is so fucking stupid; an immature child.

He wants to cry.

So he does. Sean lets himself cry, lets the tears run free: serpents carving inside his skin the roads to paradise (or maybe to hell; who the fucks knows). He will never repress himself; he may be incomplete, he may be unfinished, he may be unformed, but he will never ever in his life subdue who he is. Conquer yourself… bah. Pure scams. Pure shit. He is proud of the person he is, of the person he was, of the person he is becoming. Esteban was proud of him. Karen is too. He cries because he doesn’t know exactly why he is crying. Finn not replaying? His eyes scanning him, looking for the hidden and ugly secrets? The truth? His tired body? They worked hard today, after all. Because the ocean seems like it’s speaking to him about sad things? The frustration of being miles away from… the past? Maybe. Or maybe he cries because he needs it.

“Ey” Finn surround him with his arms on his waist. He engulfs him. Smells like the ocean and the redwoods. Oh sweet California. “ ’M sorry, ya took me by surprise”.

Sean doesn’t know if he can speak.

“They’re just stupid words” he manages. At the end of the sentence he cracks, an open wound, an open egg bleeding yellow on the ground. Gold, amber. Yellow is the color of happiness. His throat bobbles, one of his eyes tremble; the other one hurts (the dead one).

“I don’t think theyre stupid words, honey” Fin squeezes a little. “Not to me, not to ya”.

_So why…_ Sean close his eye. (Be brave, young wolf. Be the traveler, the drifter, the shapeshifter, the one who creates his own rules). He tastes his tears. Salty. When he opens his eye he focuses all his attention on the sea, on the sky. It’s so gorgeous. It was never like this in Seattle. It was almost every night like this on the road. The night is placated by the moon, reflecting her silver arms on the water’s surface, moving, changing, transforming the world on it. The nature speaking to us in a language so old it’s impossible to remember. The stars are there too, tiny spots of faint light, sweet travelers of time, millions years in the past, dancing in the present on a beach in Puerto Lobos. Then he remembers, the ocean on his front, Finn covering his back, his entire self, not how to speak to the ocean but remembers the first words he told Finn when he realized he wasn’t a fidget of his imagination: _no es Costa Rica (it’s not Costa Rica)_ and Finn’s laughter; his full-of-life laughter.

“So why you didn’t say anything?” he asks, finally.

Finn sights just right behind his left hear.

“Don't know if y're ready to hear the answer, Sean” he shrugs, trying to be chill about it, trying to hide his nervousness. “Y'know, no pressures”. And, because he is Finn, he licks his left cheek.

“Ergh, Finn!”.

“Sorry” he is no sorry at all. “I couldn’t resist”.

“Of course you couldn’t” he says with fondness.

Sean turns and looks at him, giving his back to the ocean. _Sorry Moon, sorry Stars, sorry Sea._ He is face to face with Finn, his noses touching. Eye to eyes. Their feet horribly ice-cold. The murmur of the waves. The sand between their toes. It’s ridiculous. They both burst out laughing, loud and scandalous, sure that tomorrow Miss Maria is going to reprimand them —there are so few people in Puerto Lobos, everybody knows everybody— and don’t giving a fuck about it; they laugh so hard that their bellies ache and tears star to sprout out from their eyes and in an instant the world is such a wonderful place to be in. 

Sean is so happy to be there, with Finn.

(Miles away from California. Miles away from Costa Rica. Fuckin’ A).

“It was…” he says once they have calmed down. He takes Finn’s cheek on his hands, caress him with patience, with care, with love, looking right at him. “It is not a question”.

Finn kisses him then. An open-mouthed kiss. Sloppy and sweet. Sun and stars. Redwoods and salty water and all the things they have learnt to love: the walks by the beach, the moon through the windows on the second floor, the morning breakfast in the gallery watching the sea talk with the sand, the organic coffee of Mister Hernando’s little farm, the living room with one rusty couch they share, Sean drawing, Finn reading, the fresh fruit Miss Maria gifts them every week, the only supermarket in town, DON MANOLO, full of people, the night-swims on full moons, the ways they make love. ( _You would be so proud of me right now, papito. I know you are)._ Sean reckons that, this time, Finn’s the one who is crying.

“ 'Course I love ya, sweetheart” he murmurs on his lips.

_'Course._

Sean cries, too, because _of course_. But it’s only a little bit this time.

“I love you too, Finn” He kisses him over and over and over again. “I love you, you hear me, right?” Finn nods, over and over and over again.

It’s all they need and want, for now.

**[Daniel]**

**-2021-**

They are waiting for him. Grandad and Grandma, even Mum, waving at him, and the memories of one man and two kids on the verge of their lives —they are happy. But the game is over. Five years ago on this day, three days before Halloween. The 28th of October. Why time flies so fast, a hummingbird impossible to catch? He doesn't know. So he waves back at them, even at the memory of Esteban and Sean as they were before that day. (They are happy). He takes the ice-screams from the street vendor and hurries up. The questions will always be there, waiting for him. When he touches it the sand beneath his feet is fucking hot; it burns. He runs as fast as he can.

(He has the photo of Sean and Finn on his pocket. They are happy. Daniel always carries them with him.

No matter what).

“Are you okay, Daniel?”. Mum asks, worried.

Daniel looks at Dad, looks at Sean, talking to each other far away from him. They look so fucking happy there.

“Yeah, Mum. Don’t worry. Chocolate or vanilla?”.

Santa Monica beach.

It's nice: the dreaming of a people.

**[Everyone]**

**-the year of magical thinking-****

_(As the corners of the world are our mere prologue be aware of this: when a door closes, a window opens… Or, something like that. So I say to you: to the end and shit, man. We make our own rules. I love you, no matter what happens, your hear me?).***_

_..._

_..._

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, as I didn't know with whom I should begin writting I thought fuck that and decided to star with everyone. (I don't know if you noticed but... I love them so much... my sweet babies).  
> Well, before saying goodbye here are a couple of thing you should know:  
> I'm not an english native speaker, spanish is my mother language, so if you see any errors I'm sorry, I do the best I can.  
> *A song by Foals.  
> **Spot on, it's a tribute to Joan Didion's book of the same name.  
> *** None of these phrases are mine, actually. The first one "As the corner..." is from Rachel. The second one "When a door..." is obviously Max's. The third "To the end..." is Finn's and Sean's. "We make..." is a paraphrasing of one of Sean's and maybe Daniel's, I don't quiet remember. And the last one "I love you..." is obviously Sean's. The only thing I did is put them together coherently. Nice, right? 
> 
> Hope you liked it. See ya soon.


End file.
